This invention relates to a toilet tank and particularly a toilet water tank that has a valve cap for closing water outlet tightly and a water saving means to couple with the valve cap for saving toilet flush water.
The awareness and concerns for environmental protection and resources conservation have been wide spread around the world in recent years. Water is one of the critical resources affecting people""s life everyday. Fresh water has limited supply and its availability highly depends on geographical and weather conditions which are mostly out of people""s control. Hence water conservation is an issue many people are keenly aware of nowadays. To help people to conserve water resource and reduce waste, a wide variety of water saving devices and facilities have been developed and introduced over the years. Some statistics show that, among people""s water consumption in their daily life, consumption of toilet flush water is even greater than drinking water. Hence many water saving devices for toilet use have been proposed and developed to reduce water waste. FIG. 1 and 2 show a conventional toilet tank for this purpose. It has two handles outside the tank for controlling a valve inside the tank. One handle may open the valve to a larger degree for releasing a larger amount of water to flush feces while another handle may open the valve to a smaller degree for releasing a smaller amount of water to flush urine. It may save water consumption. However the valve is usually integrally made of a soft rubber which cannot close water outlet tightly. Water leakage through the valve is prone to happen. There is still room for improvement.
It is an object of this invention to provide a water saving toilet tank that has a novel stop valve means and a linkage bar means to control and release different amount of water through a water outlet for flushing feces and urine so that water may be used more effectively and economically.
According to this invention, the tank has two beams to actuate a movable strut which in turn may cause a hollow ball to float or sink. The floating hollow ball may open the water outlet rapidly for releasing a required amount of water to flush feces. The sinking hollow ball will close the water outlet sooner for releasing a smaller amount of water to flush urine. The height of the tank ball may be adjusted for changing amount of water to be released for flushing urine.
In one aspect of this invention, the tank includes a stop valve means and a linkage bar means located above the stop valve means. The stop valve means and linkage bar means are connected by two chains at two ends thereof.
The stop valve means is located above a water outlet and includes a valve cap which has a round opening and a pair of valve lugs, a movable strut which engages with two valve disks and has a transverse trough and a wedge slot formed at an upper section thereof, a semi-spherical hollow ball having an inlet and a through hole for water and air to circulate therethrough, a rocker which has one end engageable with the transverse trough and another end formed a pinch slot and a rocker lug in the middle thereof pivotally engaged with the valve lugs for functioning like a lever.
The linkage bar means includes a flush handle located outside the tank, a shaft sleeve located inside the tank which has one end provided with two notches and three levers each has a bore formed therein, a shaft stem housed in the shaft sleeve having two fingers at one end thereof, and two beams each has one end formed a trigger end and another end having a plurality of slant openings and a pivot strut located near the trigger end pivotally engageable with the bore of the shaft sleeve.
There are further a tank ball and two chains in the tank. The tank ball has an aperture. One chain has one end engaged with the aperture of the tank ball and another end engaged with the wedge slot of the movable strut. Another chain has one end engaged with the slant opening and another end engaged with the pinch slot of the rocker.